Manage Stakeholder Expectations

Many things have been written and said about Managing Stakeholder Expectations. This is one of the most difficult tasks a project manager has to perform throughout the life cycle of the project depending upon the type and number of stakeholders involved. Essentially what may mean as a 'perfect and successful' project to the project manager, may turn out to be a complete disaster in the eyes of the stakeholders.

During Concept Phase:
A Project is conceptualized when the stakeholders or project sponsors meet and layout the project idea. Objectives and goals are set at this stage and a project is born. Once it has taken a definite shape and the ball has started rolling and the project progresses from the concept or initiation phase to design, construction, testing and finally delivery and closure. At every stage, we, as Project Managers have to manage stakeholder expectations.
Every stakeholder comes from a different arena or a different functional area and therefore has different definition of success. Hence it is very important at the onset, to make sure all stakeholders are on the same page and are driving towards a common goal. This is achieved in the Project Kick off meeting. The project sponsors or the ones who had laid the project high level objectives may not be the only ones who are the actual stakeholders that are involved with the project, as the project progresses you will find the number of stakeholders and actual representatives may also vary.
So, from the initial requirement sessions you may find that the stakeholders that get involved are deviating from the ground rule and are asking for something that is not in project scope or not inline with the general project agenda.

This may happen due to various reasons,
1> Stakeholders not clear on the Project Objectives
2> Need some understanding wrt different project areas or how projects are executed.
 It is the job of the Project Manager to make sure these risks are addressed at proper time by proper planning.

Example:
Coming to an insurance industry example of this scenario,
say the project deals with integrating your Policy-Claims administration system with a Contacts management software and during the stakeholder meetings, the discussions lean towards tweaking and tuning of another dependant 3rd party interface - CMS upload for medicare.
Agreed, the 2 items may be related, but that does not definitely mean that the other interface is to be handled in this project scope (Unless that is the way the project has been scoped out).

To handle this situation make sure the project objectives are strongly and succintly communicated to the stakeholders that we are integrating to a new contact management software and this may mean some changes associated to some middleware bridge to make the other contact dependent interfaces work as expected, with minimal to no impacts. This lays a ground rule and restricts the deviations that may otherwise happen.

How to:
Major steps to stakeholder management in any project large or small are,
Step 1:
Conduct Stakeholder interviews:
 - Study your stakeholders - their roles, who they are - organizational positions, their project roles - e.g. sponsors, end users, business SMEs, what they do? How would they influence the project outcome - completely understand their 'needs' and 'beliefs'? All this can be managed by having a 'Stakeholder map'.
 - Know them wrt likes, dislikes, project expectation etc

Step 2:
Stakeholder Communication:
This is the most important thing in any project. I cannot stress on how important is this factor to guarantee a project success.
 - Involve your stakeholders in all stages of the project right from initiation.
 - Try to understand the project objectives from the stakeholders perspective. What does it mean to them by project success/failures/key painpoints etc? Let them define this in their own terms.
 - Familiarize them with project financials, give them an overall project picture by having regular project status report meetings. In these meetings, make sure you concentrate on areas that are important to the stakeholders rather than delving into your project management methodologies and bravado stories.
 - By effective communication and holding them accountable to project realities in times of project changes we can definitely and successfully manage stakeholder expectations. Remember Stakeholders and Project Sponsors have as much vested interest in project success as everyone.